


annabeth's eight

by ThatHydrokinetic



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: ALSO as a treat, F/F, F/M, Gen, Maybe don't read, as a treat, btw this is not v kind to luke, everyone is queer! even if i don't specify!, heist! heist! heist!, it's about! the! found! family!, j bc i needed him to fill the villain role, pjo big bang 2020 babey!, so if u need a thorough and nuanced view of luke, there's also a little reyna/piper, this is an ocean's eight fusion, trans percy and trans nico
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatHydrokinetic/pseuds/ThatHydrokinetic
Summary: Annabeth is one of the best conwomen this side of the Atlantic, and between her and Percy, they are unstoppable. That is, until a few years ago, when Luke, one of Annabeth’s childhood friends, set Percy up and landed him in jail. Now that he’s out, and Annabeth has had nothing but time to think and a target for her anger, it’s time to reclaim her title.The next night, he and Annabeth are tangled together in the tub, facing one another, and he says, “Alright, tell me about your plan.”She takes a sip of her wine to hide her face when she says “What plan?” because she isn’t a terrible liar but she’s a terrible liar when she’s lying to him.“C’mon,” he says, and nudges her. “You say that like I haven’t known you since we were twelve. Also, Thalia mentioned it.”“Snitch,” Annabeth says.Based on the plot of Ocean's Eight.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Percy Jackson & Grover Underwood, Annabeth Chase & Thalia Grace, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Piper McLean & Leo Valdez
Comments: 20
Kudos: 126
Collections: PJO/HOO Big Bang 2020





	annabeth's eight

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this for the 2020 pjo big bang! i was one of the mods, and this was such a great bang to run. the entire group this year was absolutely amazing. particular shoutout to my amazing artists, [@mlbdraws](https://mlbdraws.tumblr.com/), [@officialpjo](https://officialpjo.tumblr.com/), [@wisdomofchase](https://wisdomofchase.tumblr.com/), and [@thatonetheatrekid2105](https://thatonetheatrekid2105.tumblr.com/), and to my betas, especially, for putting up with my fic that ended up twice as long as i meant: [@dont-taunt-the-octopus](https://dont-taunt-the-octopus.tumblr.com/), [@skateboardstepdad](https://skateboardstepdad.tumblr.com/), and [@galwaygremlin](https://galwaygremlin.tumblr.com/). another shoutout to jay and stephi, [@wisdom-walks-alone](https://wisdom-walks-alone.tumblr.com/) & [@rainagainstmywindow](https://rainagainstmywindow.tumblr.com/) for being such great co-mods and enabling my idea. (heist! heist! heist!)

In the end, it’s Thalia who picks him up, though she’s stolen Annabeth’s Honda Civic to do so.

“Stolen, ha,” she says when he comments on it. “More like I was forced into it. I’d never be caught dead in this, but she figured it was a bit of a drive to make on my bike.”

There is a very good reason that Annabeth drives the most nondescript car known to man, and they both know it, even if they both hate it. He does, however, appreciate not having to piggyback on Thalia’s motorcycle for the two hour drive home as she breaks several traffic laws.

“I can drive,” he offers, although he knows she’ll just snort at him, which she does. “She still mad?”

“Mad at herself, you mean,” Thalia says. “Of course. You know how she is.”

The problem is, both he and Annabeth are ‘fool me once’ kind of people; it’s part of how they’d stayed out of jail so long. The problem is, even though Percy hadn’t trusted him, Luke Castellan was one of Annabeth’s oldest friends, and they grew up grifting together. The problem is, Percy had gone to jail, and Luke is the reason he went.

“Who knows I’m out?” They’re on the freeway now, and Thalia is gleefully pushing ninety as the car groans beneath them.

“Just us,” Thalia says. “And your family. Figured you could call the rest yourself. But, just so you know—”

“Annabeth’s got a plan?”

“Annabeth’s got a plan.”

He watches the cars drive by them for a minute. Tries to tune out Thalia’s terrible fucking music taste.

“Well, alright,” he says. “I’m sure it’s crazy.”

“It’s fucking brilliant,” she agrees. “Call your mom, make sure she knows we’re on the way. We’re meeting her for dinner.”

* * *

So the thing is, most mothers wouldn’t be happy about their kids growing up and becoming criminals. The thing is, Sally Jackson isn’t most mothers.

To be fair, as she’d iterated to him multiple times, she isn’t _thrilled._ She would’ve preferred if he’d done something a little safer. A little less likely to land him in jail for decades. 

But he’s _good_ , and he likes it, and, together, he and Annabeth are pretty much unstoppable. And it isn’t like they did anything _bad,_ really. Just stealing from people who had more than they knew what to do with. At that point, he figures that if he can still rip them off, well, fair’s fair. Not like they were gonna get around to using it.

The moment Percy steps out of the car, Annabeth ambushes him from where she must have been waiting by the door. Her weight sends him rocketing back against the car, and then they’re wrapped around each other, and she’s burying her face in his neck and kissing his cheeks and forehead and nose and he’s laughing because she’s _here, here, here._

“Hey, baby,” he says, and she just laughs, a little wet.

“Hey, Percy,” she says, and kisses him square on the mouth, slow.

But there’s noise coming from the house and suddenly someone else is pressed against his side, and _shit,_ when did his little sister get so big?

He drops Annabeth so he can pick up Estelle, and she screams as he swings her around. His mom is somewhere, he can hear her laughing, and Paul is pretending to admonish him. It feels so normal, like he’s been gone for a few weeks instead of five years.

He hugs Paul before being released to his mom, who holds him for what feels like hours while she tries not to cry. 

She tries not to smother him, but he can tell it’s hard for her to let go of him. Throughout dinner, she brushes against him every chance she gets. Annabeth holds his hand the entire time. Estelle chats with him non-stop, reluctant to let go of his attention.

Thalia leaves after dinner, but Percy and Annabeth stay the night. He spends the evening baking cookies with his mom, while Annabeth sits on the counter. She and Estelle make a game of seeing how many spoonfuls of dough they can steal without getting caught.

* * *

The next night, he and Annabeth are tangled together in the tub, facing one another, and he says, “Alright, tell me about your plan.”

She takes a sip of her wine to hide her face when she says “What plan?” because she isn’t a terrible liar but she’s a terrible liar when she’s lying to him.

“C’mon,” he says, and nudges her. “You say that like I haven’t known you since we were twelve. Also, Thalia mentioned it.”

“Snitch,” Annabeth says, but she’s smiling, something curled and loose around the edges. “I’ll show you tomorrow.”

“You’ll show me tomorrow, huh?” He pokes her in the stomach, and sends a wave of water over the edge of the tub when he dodges her elbow to his gut. “It’s like you don’t even love me.”

“I love you,” she said. “Sometimes.”

And he laughs, because he can; here, now, again.

* * *

“The Met.” His voice is flat.

“The Met,” Annabeth parrots. She steals one of his fries.

The building’s in front of them, in all its white museum glory. They’re on a bench, eating vendor food.

“You’ve gotta give me more.”

“Inside,” she says, and he sighs, but it’s not exasperated. It’s her game; the intrigue, the excitement of laying it all out. He loves this about her.

“It’s jewels,” she whispers to him, and he side-eyes her.

“Jewels?”

“Spectacular, great, big, blingy, Liz Taylor jewels. Spend most of their time just...locked in a vault, fifty feet underground. Kinda tragic, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t realize jewels were your thing,” he says, wry, and she smiles at him. “How are we gonna get them out of the vault?”

She looks at the Met. Steals another fry. “They’re gonna bring ‘em to us.”

* * *

It’s Percy who goes after Luke, even though Annabeth wants to.

“We both know it’s gotta be me,” he says, carding his fingers through her hair. There’s barely been a moment they haven’t been touching since the day he was released.

She sighs. “We don’t, actually.”

“We do, actually. We don’t want him to know you’re in on it.”

“He’ll know either way. This is nothing at all like a con you’d pull.”

That’s fair. He’s too direct for something this convoluted. Annabeth likes to have backup plans for her backup plans; Percy likes stuff he can figure out on the fly. 

“Maybe I just don’t want you to have to see him again, huh?”

“Please,” she huffs. “I can handle him.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. What if I think you’re gonna gut him in the middle of his fancy showroom?”

“Like you’re less likely to gut him?”

They’re quiet, until Percy says, “But I won’t.”

“But I might,” Annabeth says, with a sigh. “Fine.”

So Percy finds a charcoal suit and makes Annabeth tie his tie and then goes downstairs to hail a cab.

Luke’s gallery is as pretentious as Percy remembers. If anything, he’s gotten worse over the years Percy spent in prison, but that might just be Percy’s bias speaking.

Luke’s entire body freezes when he spots Percy across the hall. He excuses himself from the girl he’s talking to and nearly chases Percy down to where he’s standing, pretending to appreciate this pigment scattered across a canvas.

“Percy. I didn’t realize you were out. How’s Annabeth?” Luke says. Percy’s smile was cut for war.

“Don’t ask me about Annabeth,” Percy says politely, pressing into Luke until he backs into a wall. He grunts quietly as Percy shoves at him with his shoulder and presses a knife against his gut. “Better than a shiv, right?”

It’s a nice knife; Luke would know, since it’s Annabeth’s. And Luke knows it’s Annabeth’s because he gave it to her. 

“Okay, okay,” Luke says, and Percy shushes him.

“Such a nice face,” he drawls, trailing the knife up against his abdomen.

“I’ll call the police.”

“Okay.” Percy’s not sure if Luke’s breath is hitching because he recognizes it or just because of the feeling of a knife against his throat. “You know what we do with snitches?” he asks Luke, light, conversational, as he saws off the top button from his very expensive shirt. Luke knows better than to answer, and Percy feels his eyes on him as he leaves.

* * *

He slides Annabeth the button over Chinese, and she laughs.

* * *

They take Thalia with them to the Met the next day, and then to lunch afterwards.

“ _The Scepter and the Orb,_ ” Thalia says. “How are we playing this?”

“Well, we’re not robbing the museum,” Annabeth says. “We’re—”

“Robbing someone _in_ the museum, yeah, yeah, you mentioned.” Thalia waves a hand. “Even _if_ this is possible—”

“It’s possible.”

“We’d need, like—” Thalia cuts herself off. Annabeth takes some food off her plate. “Twenty people. And half a million dollars.”

Percy’s also kind of quietly skeptical about this whole thing, but he’d rather watch the two of them go at it then get dragged into it himself.

“Seven.”

“Seven million?”

“Seven people and twenty grand.”

“That’s nuts,” Percy interjects before he can think about it. Then he does. “I don’t know if I can believe it, but I want to see it done.”

“Why do you need to do this, huh?” Thalia says. “Why don’t you just, I don’t know, mug him and steal his pants?”

Annabeth crinkles her nose. “You grew up with him too, Thalia,” she says. “It wasn’t just Percy he betrayed.”

“So you’re gonna steal from the Met—” A look from Annabeth “— _Fine,_ you’re gonna steal from someone _at_ the Met—just to frame him.”

“And to see it done,” Annabeth says, and clinks glasses with Percy. Thalia makes a noise in her throat.

“This is what she’s good at, Thals,” Percy says, earning a kick in the leg that he takes with grace. 

“You’re so fucking ridiculous.”

“Thalia,” Annabeth says. “I’ve been thinking about this for five years. I’d worked out all the kinks by three. Every time I got caught, I fixed it, and by now, it’s running like clockwork.” She turns her eyes, big and pretty and gray, on Thalia, her oldest friend and adoptive sister. “But I need you to help me do it.”

“Like I was ever gonna say no,” she says, and raises her glass.

* * *

Annabeth ran away from home when she was nine.

She made it pretty far; actually got to West Virginia, apparently, before the police picked her up. Unwilling to go home, she refused to give them a name, and her dad hadn’t put out a missing person report on her, so the cops finally sighed and shuffled her into temporary housing. A few weeks later, she was sent to a group home.

A group home where Thalia was living, having done the same thing a few months earlier. 

Thalia, according to legend, had taken “one look at the fuckin’ runt and decided to adopt her.” 

Percy’s not entirely clear on how they weren’t separated in the system, or how they ended up with Chiron in New York, but somehow, by Christmas the following year, they were Thalia and Annabeth Brunner.

Luke was, in every way possible, the boy next door. His mom was nuts and his dad was a career criminal. Chiron himself was a veteran of the game, so when his two very stubborn adoptive daughters started grifting, he realized stopping them was fruitless and he was better off teaching them how not to be stupid.

Percy met Annabeth in middle school, after expulsion number six. Annabeth barely tolerated him, but he established himself pretty early as the person to go to if you needed anything—IDs, cigarettes, candy. Annabeth figured he was a good ally to have, and learned with everyone else that he was a bad person to alienate.

He doesn’t quite remember when they went from grudging allies to friends, or when they went from friends to ride-or-dies, but he knows that he wouldn’t change any of it.

* * *

“So, the Met Gala,” Annabeth says. “Every year, they get some celebrity to host it.”

“I guess that explains why we’re at this press conference,” Percy says, fiddling with his fake press badge. “So that woman, she’s. . .”

“Piper McLean, one of the biggest movie stars in the past decade, yeah. But she’s not our mark.”

“She’s not?”

Annabeth shakes her head, adjusts her attention to the interviews in front of them, just as someone asks Piper ‘who she’s wearing.’

Piper smiles something twisted. “Oh, this old thing?”

“No, I mean, who’s dressing you,” the reporter says, deliberately slow. 

“I don’t really know yet.”

“The designer.”

“I,” Piper says, still smiling, “don’t _know_ yet. But I’ll be sure to tell you as soon as I do, alright? Next question.”

Percy slides a look at Annabeth, sees her looking pleased with herself. “Alright, so we need a designer.”

“And I’ve got one in mind.”

* * *

Percy knows jack shit about fashion, but this stuff doesn’t look too bad. It’s interesting, if nothing else. Gears and dragons and top hats. You couldn’t tell that from the muttering crowd, though.

“I had Thalia look at his accounts,” Annabeth whispers to him. “He owes the IRS $5 million. There’s a lien on his assets.”

“He’s not bad,” Percy whispers back.

“Yeah. Word is, he had one really big break, and has been struggling since. Took out a couple of risky loans. This was his last shot.”

“And it’s crashing.”

“It’s a trainwreck, yeah.”

“How do we know she’ll go for him?”

“They went to school together, before she started acting seriously. Got into all kinds of trouble together.”

“So she trusts him.”

“Yeah. What’s more, she might actually like him.”

They corner him after the show, finding him tucked behind a counter with a jar of Nutella in his lap and some sort of fidget toy in his hands. Percy and Annabeth share a look before she turns and smiles. “Leo Valdez?”

He looks at them, confused. “Who are you?”

“Big fans,” Annabeth says.

“Huge,” Percy says, ignoring the middle finger Annabeth sends him from behind her back.

“It was a great show,” Annabeth continues.

“No it wasn’t,” Leo says. “It was a disaster.” He shrugs, laughs unconvincingly, and eats a spoonful of nutella. “‘S fine. I’ve heard jail food isn’t actually that bad.”

Percy slides down the wall next to him and slings an arm around his shoulder. “It isn’t,” he says agreeably. “But—what if I told you, hypothetically, that we could fix this?”

Leo squints at them. No matter what he’s doing, at least one of his hands is messing with the fidget. Percy’s hyperactive, but this kid is worse. “How?”

Annabeth sits on a chair and fans her jacket over her lap. “Dress Piper McLean for the Met Gala.”

Now he freezes. “Are you nuts?”

Percy just smiles, a little crooked.

“Wait,” he says. “Are you journalists?”

Percy says “Absolutely not” at the same time as Annabeth’s “God, no”, which seems to satisfy him. 

“Okay then,” Leo says. “Show me what you’ve got.”

* * *

“Shit,” he says, looking at the tablet they’ve handed him. “I _do_ know her. I thought she sounded familiar.”

“Really?” Annabeth says, and, well, that tells Percy how they’re playing it. 

“Yeah,” Leo says, distracted. “We were friends in elementary school, though she wasn’t McLean back then. _Damn,_ she grew up pretty. I mean, when I knew her she cut her own hair with kiddie scissors, but, again, goddamn. Yeah, I could totally dress her. What’s the theme? Royalty? Easy. Dunno why she would want me to, but I’ve got it. How do we feel about a suit?”

Percy takes a step forward. “You can put her in anything. You just also have to dress her in this—” and swipes over the photo. 

“God no,” Leo says, immediately. “That’s gaudy as all hell.”

“It’s called the Toussaint,” Annabeth says. “Named after Jeanne Toussaint, Cartier’s director of jewelry from ‘33 to ‘68.”

“It’s over six pounds,” Percy says, sitting next to Leo. “Of diamonds.”

Annabeth perches on the coffee table in front of them. “They locked it up, after she died. It’s been in their vault ever since.”

“So how are we gonna get it out?” 

“They might let it out—” she swipes back to the image of Piper— “for her.”

“The theme is European royalty, with an emphasis on the crown jewels. If you were to _insist_ on the Toussaint, on behalf of Piper McLean. . .” Percy trails off, watching Leo nod to himself.

“I’ll make it work.”

* * *

They set Leo up with one of Piper’s rivals, Drew Tanaka, first. Just lunch, something to get people talking, staged on both sides. It gets Piper to call, though, which was the point.

“Ms. McLean,” Leo says, standing to shake her hand. Piper smiles and titters, and Leo wonders if he’s the only one who hears how practiced it sounds.

“Valdez, right?”

“Yes. Call me Leo,” he says, his eyes flicking from hers to outside the window, where Percy and Annabeth have taken to standing. He remembers their words from the car ride— _Ignore her, indifference is an aphrodisiac—_ and tries to balance that with _not_ ignoring someone who, at the very least, used to be one of his best friends.

Her brows furrow, briefly, before she says, “Wait—did you—sorry, this is probably so weird, but did you go to the Wilderness School for elementary school?”

“I did. . .” he says, trailing off, looking at her the same way she had just looked at him, even though he knows where this is going. “Wait, _Pipes_?”

She throws up her arms and pulls him into a hug from the otherside of the table, which he returns. Percy and Annabeth were sure she would remember him, but Leo’s always thought of himself as pretty forgettable. He’s glad, though. He loved Piper when they were kids.

“I thought your last name was Cypris?”

“Yeah, when I was living with my mom, but I changed it when I moved in with my dad. Shit, who would’ve thought?”

“Who _would’ve_ thought!”

They talk a lot of nothing for most of lunch—Leo asks about her mother and grandfather (still flighty, dead) and Piper asks about his father and mom (still absent, dead) and about music and stories from high school. It feels like Leo would’ve imagined hanging out with Piper would feel like, past the third grade.

“Oh my god,” Piper says, once they’ve cleared the check she insisted on paying for, “it’s been, like, an hour, and we haven’t even talked about what I called you to talk about. Since when are you a _designer?_ ”

Honestly, it was a shock to everyone when he fell into it. “My abuela was a seamstress, and so was one of the moms at my last foster home. Started doing sketches and it just kinda...snowballed. I designed the dress for my foster sister’s prom, one year.”

“No kidding.”

“Hey, you’re one to talk. I thought you hated everything about showbiz, huh?”

She flashes her teeth. “Believe me. But, same as you—I got suckered into it, not sure how to get out, it I even really want to. Though I do want to hire you to dress me.”

“For the Met Gala? Me?”

_“Yeah,_ you. I’ve looked at your work, and it’s good, and I like you. Are you free?”

“Am I— _yes_ , I’m free. I’d love to. I’ll call you about it in a bit?”

And so that’s that.

* * *

That night, Percy and Annabeth are sitting opposite one another, their legs tangled, laps full of the cookies they’d taken from the Jackson’s. “So, the team,” Percy prompts, once conversation dwindles.

“The team.”

“We’ve got Thalia for hacking, and we snagged Leo. Who else do we need?”

“Someone for the pieces. We’ve gotta get that necklace disassembled before we’ll be able to do anything.”

Percy thinks. Snaps a cookie in half. “I might have someone.”

Annabeth expels a sigh. “Rachel.”

“Do you still have a problem with her?”

“I was fifteen!” Annabeth says, indignant. “I’ve let it go.”

“Have you?”

She kicks at the underside of his thigh. “Yes. I was fifteen and jealous, okay? It’s been, like, almost twenty years.”

“Mm, didn’t seem that way at Grover’s wedding—”

“Oh my God, Percy, you’re killing me. Just call her.”

* * *

“I can’t believe it’s been five years and your routine hasn’t changed at all.”

Rachel startles enough that her knee bangs hard against the table and her pencil goes flying. Percy’s more than a little proud of himself for that, but he can’t express it past her nearly strangling him in a hug.

And then she punches him in the arm. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, rubbing at his new bruise. 

She raises an eyebrow. “I guess this isn’t a social call.”

“I would’ve visited anyway!”

“Uh huh.”

“I just would’ve texted first, if that were the case. I might have something for you. You know, if you’re interested.”

She bends over the arm of her chair and scrambles for her pencil. “Go buy me another coffee.”

He does. When he sits back down, latte in hand, she says, “Tell me about it.”

He says a little, just the bare-bones. What’s really important is: “How long would it take you to make seven pieces of jewelry, if the stones were already cut?”

Her brows furrow as she thinks about it. “Uh, probably five or six hours?”

“What if I told you you wouldn’t have to depend on your dad anymore?”

Her answer is immediate. “Less.”

* * *

Percy laughs a little. “Okay, okay. Jewelry. You said seven, right? Who else?”

“We’ll need a fence.”

“Just call Grover, then.”

“Oh, Percy, baby,” Annabeth says. Dusts crumbs off her fingers. “Grover’s out.”

“What do you mean, he’s out?”

“After he and Juniper got hitched,” she says. She takes a bite of one of his cookies, despite her own pile. “He wanted to settle down, for real. Didn’t want her or the kids getting involved in anything.”

“I didn’t think he’d go through with it. _Really_?”

“Really.”

“Do you think he would come back for this? The money’s good. The money’s _really_ good. And is there anyone else we trust?”

She chews on her lip for a moment. “I’ll give him a call. See what he says.”

* * *

Grover’s youngest is kicking around a ball in his dining room when he gets a call. He shoves it against his shoulder and up to his ear before checking the caller ID. “Hello?”

_“Hey, Grover.”_

“Annabeth?” He says it a little too loud, and glances around before whispering, “I told you, I’m—”

_“I’m outside.”_

“What?”

_“I’m in your garage.”_

She is, in fact, in his garage, three or four rows deep, between his wall of Keurigs and imitation coach luggage.

“Look at all this,” she says. There’s something amused in the way she turns, looking at the shelves and shelves of goods he hides back here. There’s something light about her that he hasn’t seen in a while. “I thought you retired?”

“I did,” he tries, but she just takes the smoothie he forgot he was holding out of his hands.

“Mm.” She takes a sip, wrinkles her nose, and deposits it back between his still-curled fingers. “Percy’s out.”

“He’s _what?”_

When she smiles, it’s honest. His chest hurts. She’s twenty years removed from the lonely girl he met in the sixth grade, and this weird, latent big-brother instinct he feels around her is mostly unnecessary, but he’ll never be able to let it go. Her here, with a lightness he hasn’t seen in the five years since Percy’s arrest, has him smiling.

“He’s out. Released just a few days ago. We need your help with a job.”

“Annabeth. . .”

“I know, I know, just—it’s for Percy.”

“Is it? Or is it against Luke?”

She scoffed, tossing some curls over her shoulder, but he can tell the question has knocked her offbeat. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t—I don’t want to be dragged into some—some revenge quest.”

“You aren’t just being dragged into some revenge quest. You’re also being dragged into a very, very big job.”

“No,” Grover said. “I’m not—I don’t do that anymore.”

“Do you want me to tell you how big the job is?”

“No!” 

“I’m gonna tell you how big the job is.”

She leans forward, just enough to whisper the number in his ear. He can feel his own eyes widening. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

He _hates_ that he’s considering it. Juniper doesn’t know anything about any of this. He’s been trying to get free of this life for six or seven years now. He’s got kids to think about. 

But, well, he _is_ thinking about his kids. He’s thinking about how absolutely set they would be if they pull this off.

(He’s thinking, _only a little,_ about how much he misses properly working jobs. About how bored he is, sometimes, as if his garage, with its towering piles of knock-offs and items procured through barely legal means isn’t enough proof. About how much he misses Annabeth and Percy and their crazy, perfect crew and the adrenaline of a crazy, perfect heist.)

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and Annabeth smiles like that’s a yes, which, maybe, it is.

She leans with him against a stack of boxes, then twirls a finger. “How do you explain all of this to Juniper?”

“Uh...eBay?”

* * *

“Okay, so assuming Grover’s good, that just means a pickpocket.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth says. She stares vacantly over his shoulder. “The last one I worked with got arrested a few months back. We could call Ethan?”

“God, no offence, but fuck Ethan. What’s up with Lou?”

“Lou Ellen? She’s pregnant.”

“Shit,” Percy says. He eats another cookie. “Wait, actually. I might know someone.”

“Yeah?”

He smirks. “You know that kid I met at summer camp?”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

* * *

Percy and Annabeth are sitting on a bench, watching someone a few years younger than them swindle some man at Three-Card Monte.

(When Annabeth first saw, she said, “Really? Monte?” and Percy said, “Just watch.”)

He’s wearing an oversized hoodie, an aviator jacket heavy on top, and a beanie crushed over a head of dark, thick curls. It all makes him look young, way younger than Percy knows he is.

Nico isn’t great at putting on a show, but he does well enough at seeming sympathetic towards the mark, creating camaraderie enough that he can wrap an arm around the mark, thumping his back and stealing the watch off one of his wrists.

Annabeth raises an eyebrow and says “Not bad,” and Percy just smiles.

They take him to a McDonald’s and sit in a corner booth once they get their food.

Percy pulls Nico into a quick hug over the sticky table, and Nico takes it with good grace. “I don’t know when you last saw Annabeth, but—Annabeth, Nico. Nico, Annabeth.”

He and Nico have a weird history. They met at a summer camp when Nico was eleven and Percy was fifteen; they bonded over being trans and growing up in the Upper East Side, and Percy did his best to make sure Nico remembered Percy was there when he was needed. 

Then he worked a job with Nico’s older sister, Bianca, and the crew she ran with got busted the same week. Nico never really forgave Percy over it, even though it wasn’t really his fault, and Percy did his best to make it up to him by dragging him to dinner when he could and letting him crash on their couch when he needed it.

Percy’s constantly unsure whether Nico’s actually okay with him or not, and, in the way of a lot of Percy’s friends, actually, has a weird history of tension with Annabeth. But Nico’s reliable and Percy trusts him and he knows Nico could really, really use the money.

“So I’m just lifting a necklace?” Nico asks once they’ve given him the bones.

“It’s a very big necklace,” Percy says.

“And the money’s real?”

“Hundred percent.”

Here’s one of those moments where Percy goes _Oh, he still doesn’t trust me,_ as Nico’s shadowed eyes stare at him blankly. Then he unfreezes, shifts a little, and shrugs. “Sure, then. I’m in.”

As they leave, Annabeth says, “Can I have my watch back?” and Nico hands it over with something close to a smile. “And his wallet.”

Percy checks his pockets and feels his mouth drop open. “ _Hey!”_

“That was a test, by the way,” Nico says, throwing it over. “You failed.”

Percy glares, but he’s smiling, and Nico huffs something close to a laugh, so it’s alright, in the end.

* * *

Finally, everyone comes to the loft on Friday.

Thalia’s already there, of course, her four monitors and complex tangle of cords taking over a whole corner of the main room. Percy had spent the night at his mom’s, because Annabeth had wanted some time on her own to go apeshit over setup, and because she wanted him, like the rest, to have no idea what he was getting into.

He knows Annabeth better than anybody, but even he can only shake his head at the perfect, to-scale model of the Met she has on their makeshift stage. He can picture her, curls flying out of a bun, bent over it, piles of blueprints spread around and glue on her fingertips. God, he loves her.

Percy sits closest to the projector, and everyone else sits in the rough U-shape she has set up.

“Okay, hello, welcome,” she says, pulling up a slideshow. “Let me present you with a hypothetical scenario.”

“How hypothetical?” Rachel asks. 

“Not very, unless we screw up,” Percy says, smiling out of the corner of his mouth.

Annabeth bullies on. “16.5 million in each of your bank accounts, five weeks from now.”

He and Grover and Thalia both knew the number beforehand, but the rest of them can’t hold back a gasp, and Thalia wolf-whistles anyway. 

“In three and half weeks, the Met will be hosting its annual ball celebrating its new costume exhibit, and we are going to rob it. Not the ball itself, but a very important set of diamonds that will be attending the ball—” she flips to a picture of the Toussaint— “on the neck of Piper McLean, who Leo will be dressing.”

“Is that the Toussaint?” Rachel says.

“Hell yeah it is,” Percy responds.

“Once Piper is unknowingly onboard, we can use her to get the Toussaint out of the Cartier vault, hack the Met security system—thank you, Thalia—infiltrate the Met ball—considered to be one of the most exclusive—”

“ _The_ most exclusive—” Thalia interjects.

“ _The_ most exclusive party invitation in America.” She’s quiet for a moment, a well-timed moment of dramatic silence. “So go home and get your shit in order, because starting tomorrow, we begin one of the biggest jewel heists in history.” She sits, leans against the stage, and looks at Percy, who can do nothing but grin, proud and fierce, back. 

“Any questions?”

[](https://mlbdraws.tumblr.com/post/622534236612771840/its-heist-time-heres-my-first-piece-for)

* * *

Grover’s on the phone with his daughter—trying to field her questions about why he’s gone for the next few weeks—when the 3D printer shows up.

“Sweetie, I have to go,” he says. “I just got a brand-new toy, and I can’t wait to play with it.”

He prints a replica of the Florence Cathedral in zirconium that he presents to Annabeth for analysis. 

“Not bad,” she says, running a finger along the clean edges. 

“Not as good as your scale model of the Met, I’m sure,” he says, just a little teasing. “Now unhand the cathedral. Do you wanna see the glasses?”

“ _Yes,_ I wanna see the glasses.”

“Here,” he says, passing off the other delivery made that day. “If Leo can pull this off—and that is a _big_ ‘if’, this is so crazy—then those glasses will be able to scan the real necklace and send that here. And then we’ll be able to print us a copy.”

* * *

Leo takes Rachel with him to Cartier, and he’s glad he did.

“These are not the Toussaint,” she says, as soon as they sit in front of the representative.

“Right,” he says. “We just thought—that you would like to see these.”

“Okay,” Leo says, drawing it out. “Why?”

The representative— _Octavian,_ Leo thinks—says, “Well, there are certain— _l_ _ogistical_ problems with that necklace. We wouldn’t even know how to insure it.”

“We were very clear on the phone,” Leo says, thinking back to the prompts Annabeth and Grover had presented him with in case something like this happened. “We are _only_ interested in the Toussaint.”

“That would be a—a _much_ longer discussion.”

Rachel and Leo look at one another, nod in tandem, and both turn to Octavian with their hands raised as if to say, _Well, then, let’s have it._

He takes them to another representative, the guy with the big office and the name and the accent. 

“That necklace,” French Accent says, “is valued at over $150 _million_ dollars.”

“Well, I’m not really a numbers person,” Leo says.

“It would need its own security team. A new insurance policy—”

“I’m sure you’ll work out all the details.”

He scoffs at them. “It’s not that simple. I’m afraid the answer is no.”

“No?”

“No.”

He shoots Rachel a worried glance, and her red hair swells as if in answer. Then, all in the same move, she sucks in a breath, whirls in her seat, and takes a breath. “Can I just say that I have always, _always_ loved Cartier. I think, historically, that this has been the most significant house in the world. But there is a _whole generation_ of people out there who mispronounce your name.”

“French can be difficult,” French Accent says.

“No,” Rachel says, and then starts speaking rapidly in French. Leo can’t understand a lick of it; even though his Spanish fluency might give him a leg up in theory, he can’t get past the accent. But French Accent’s face goes from unmoving to considering about halfway through her speech, and all Leo can say in support is “ _Oui.”_

They’re taken down to the vault. 

There are chandeliers everywhere, which seems a strange choice for an underground vault, but it’s got nothing on the wrought iron gates and manual keys. The Toussaint is brought to them in a velvet red box, and for a moment, Leo and Rachel can do nothing but stare at it—it looks even heavier in person.

Then Leo remembers the glasses and puts them on, but he’s got no signal. He tries tapping them as best he can, trying to giggle the signal, but nothing happens and he’s getting worried. This is all for nothing if they can’t get a scan; without a scan, they won’t have a copy.

“Some vault,” Leo says, forcing a laugh.

“Five feet of solid concrete,” Octavian says. 

Thankfully, Rachel catches on before the security does. “The light!” she declares.

Leo hopes he doesn’t look as confused as he feels. “Yes.”

“You said you wanted to see the necklace in the light.”

_Ah._ “Right!” he says. “I must have the light.”

“There’s light down here,” Octavian tries, but Leo is barreling on.

_“Natural_ light, of course. That’s the only way you can tell how anything _actually_ looks. The red carpet happens while the sun is still up. No, I’m afraid that’s vital.”

“It’s vital,” Rachel repeats, nodding.

“I must have the sun,” Leo says, looking up towards the ceiling.

“He _must_ have the sun.”

Everyone working for Cartier looks extremely put-upon. Rachel and Leo don’t crack.

They’re taken upstairs.

“How is this light, Mr. Valdez?”

“Uh...yes, we have the sun. This should do fine. Let me have a look.” And, this time, the glasses work. A bar in the corner tells him the percent scanned, and it is agonizingly slow—at one point, Octavian asks if he’s okay, and Rachel plays it off with a “This is his process” that barely manages to satisfy him. It feels like an hour as the bar slowly creeps upward and the guards around them get increasingly twitchy.

“Mr. Valdez, we need—this needs to go back—”

Leo raises a finger and the bar goes from _97%, 98%, 99%—_

“I’m done,” he says, and straightens. The men rush to squirrel the necklace away.

He and Rachel go out to a celebratory lunch. When they get back, a perfect replica for the Toussaint is resting against the neck of a mannequin.

* * *

“I dunno,” Piper says, standing in the mirror. Her once-choppy brown hair falls around her in loose waves.

“What do you mean, you dunno?”

“I dunno!” Pins and needles and fabric are settled around them in the bedroom of her apartment, and Leo does his best to search for his scissors without sticking himself.

“Well, this is just a muslin. You have to remember that. It’s going to be seafoam, for starters—it’ll look great against your skin.”

“Maybe it’s the hemline.”

“I can fix that.”

“Or maybe the neck?” She waves her hands around, her fingers resting against her collarbone. “It’s the necklace.”

“It’s not the necklace,” Leo asserts. He is, maybe, panicking a little.

“It’s just messy.”

“It’s not messy! Right now, yeah, but that’s because it’s safety pins. I put that together last night. No, it’ll be diamond, through and through.” 

“I just—isn’t it tacky?”

“It’s six pounds of diamonds. Six pounds of diamonds cannot be tacky.”

She hums to herself, and Leo tries to press his advantage. “It would be tacky on others, maybe, but not on you. C’mon, Pipes, you’re gorgeous. You could pull off anything. You’re going to blow everyone away.”

“Okay. Okay! Are you sure?”

“I’m _absolutely_ sure.” He smiles at her, wide and honest. “You’re going to look stunning.”

* * *

They’re all here at the Met today. Percy and Annabeth and Thalia cased the joint the last time they were there, but this trip isn’t for them. This trip is so that Rachel can distract a security guard with a bad Southern accent and Annabeth can leave her forged _Daughters of the Revolution_ against the wall.

This was Annabeth’s convoluted plan to get the Met to question their security. Thalia bugs their meeting with Hephaestus Security so she and Annabeth can go out for falafel and listen in on the line, satisfied that they’ve gotten what they want.

“So what was the point of all that?” Rachel asks the following morning, red hair loose and messy, a bowl of popcorn on her lap.

“They’re making changes to their security system now,” Annabeth answers, taking the cup of coffee Percy passes her. “Which means we can make changes, too, and avoid detection. Can you pull up the cameras?” she asks Thalia.

Percy jumps in as the screen flips to an array of different camera feeds. “They have cameras covering every inch of this place. So we’re going to hit a place they don’t even care about. Thalia?”

She double clicks the feed showing the bathrooms so that it enlarges. Percy continues, “It’s a New York State law that cameras can’t be mounted in bathrooms.”

“Apparently, it’s a privacy violation,” Annabeth says.

Thalia smirks. “Unless you’re into that.”

“Once we get the Toussaint, our biggest problem is going to be getting it out of there, and security is going to go over every inch of security footage. Anyone seen exiting the bathroom is going to be a suspect.”

“So. . .” Grover prompts.

“So we get a mule,” Annabeth says, reaching over to take Percy’s coffee and replacing his full mug with her drained one. “Somebody else is gonna move it for us. Nico, how much room do you need outside that bathroom to plant it on somebody?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. Nine feet?”

“And Thalia, how much time do you need to build a nine-foot blind spot?”

“Moving a camera?”

“Mhmm.”

“Bit by bit? Ten, twelve days.”

Annabeth shoots Percy a satisfied look over the rim of her mug, and he just smiles toothily back at her.

Rachel twists sideways in her seat to look at Annabeth, a bit incredulous. “How long did it take you to figure all this out?”

She hums. “Five years, eight months, and twelve days. Give or take.”

* * *

Thalia gets them into the Met computers by sending their head security guy a Trojan email (“I sent him to a fake website for Wheaten breeds,” she snickers. “Like candy from a baby.”)

Grover swings himself a job at Vogue so they’ll have inside access to both the Gala itself and the guest list. 

That night, they have another team meeting to go over the seating arrangement.

“This is unbelievable,” Leo says, looking at all the names. “I mean, Taylor Swift?” Nico throws a piece of popcorn at him. “Like, can we just go to this? Do we have to steal stuff?” 

“Yes,” Percy and Annabeth say together. 

“Where is she?” Annabeth asks.

Grover answers, “Table four, ten o’clock. Straightest shot to the bathroom without putting her in Siberia.”

“There’s a blank spot next to her,” Rachel notices.

Annabeth shrugs with false casualness. “It’s for her date.”

“Who’s her date?”

Annabeth says, “I don’t know,” and resolutely ignores the three suspicious looks sent her way.

* * *

Piper usually finds the Pre-Chairman’s dinners so stuffy. Most dinners are, honestly—she’s sure most people would prefer if they just bought some pizzas and put on some dance music, but they have to stick to decorum and drink out of wine glasses full of water and in old marble buildings and at tables with name cards, some strange combination of too-formal and kindergarten.

The man sitting next to her is pleasant enough, though. He’s got an interesting scar down the edge of his cheek, cutting through his eyebrow, and it crinkles when he smiles at her. He’s not really her type, but he’s not totally dull, which is all she can ask for at something like this.

And he’s _smooth._ She’s not into him at all, but something about the way he tilts his body towards her, attentive, is heady. And he knows about art, even if his tastes are more modern than hers.

He’s a strange choice for a dinner like this. An artist, sure, and rich, but he’s not exactly known for his star power. And there’s something—she can’t shake the feeling that his name is familiar, and she can’t shake that that might not be a good thing.

But he’s always wanted a ticket to the Met Gala, he says, and he loves the exhibit they’re highlighting. European royalty. He knows the story behind each of those pieces, he says, has a friend who does jewelry work who’s absolutely obsessed with them. She’s got an empty plus-one, she says, because he’s better than any option she’s met so far. And Piper McLean isn’t going to go to the Met Gala unaccompanied.

Besides. He at least promises to be interesting.

* * *

“I feel kinda bad,” Leo tells Percy, leaning against the bathroom vanity. “Implicating Piper in this, I mean.”

“Don’t,” Percy says. He’d stolen one of Leo’s fidget toys and was messing with it now, one of the buttons _click click click_ ing. “She won’t be implicated. Involved, yes. But no one’s gonna arrest her for getting robbed.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, maybe things’ll be a little annoying for her for a little while. Police statements, tabloids, maybe a few interviews. Nothing worse than she’d have to deal with normally.” He leans back, stretching his long legs in front of him, that Leo eyes with some jealousy. He’s always been shorter than he wanted. “Honestly, to me, she seemed the type to thank us for bringing some excitement to her life.” 

Leo laughs, because, yeah, probably.

* * *

“How did Percy get arrested, anyway?” Rachel asks, massaging coconut oil into her curls as she sat on the closed toilet lid in the bathroom. Annabeth, leaning over the sink, spits out her toothpaste. “I don’t think I ever heard the full story.”

Annabeth sighs and leans a hip against the counter. “Percy and I were having a bit of a slow patch. Rigging bingo, roulette cons, pickpocketing. Small time. We were lucky if we made a thousand a night. And he was starting to spend more time at home, you know, because his mom had to go back to work and they needed someone to watch Estelle. 

“And then Luke calls me.” Rachel recognizes the name. Even before she was working this job, you couldn’t spend long in the con business and not hear about Luke Castellan. “He’d been working as an art dealer for a couple of years, right, and I thought he’d decided to go straight.”

Annabeth sits across from Rachel, on the edge of the tub. She spreads her legs wide, braces her arms against her knees, and overall, looks the least put-together that Rachel’s ever seen her. She and Rachel had never been close, probably would never be close, due to some combination of slightly incompatible personalities and childhood grudges, but Rachel can tell that this is weighing down on her. The guilt or the stress or maybe just the long hours. Rachel’s not gonna pry. But there’s something she likes, here, seeing Annabeth something close to human.

“He wanted to work a job with me. He’d make a sale, and I’d pose as another buyer to drive up the price. Percy got in on it a couple of times, to help keep people off our trail. Fuck, he never did like Luke. I thought he was just being irrational. I’d known Luke forever; I worked my first job with him.” She puts her head in her hands. “Percy never did trust him.”

Rachel’s not much one for hesitation, so she reaches over and rubs a hand up and down Annabeth’s hunched spine. She skitters under the unexpected weight, but it seems to shake loose the rest of her story. 

“One day, he was setting up a job with Percy. Asked him to pose as the seller, not the buyer. Just a couple of signatures, then a trade-off between the documents and the money. 

“He and Percy were arrested that night. The buyers were undercover officers and took them both in for fraud. Percy didn’t say anything, because that’s what you do, right? Don’t say a word. Don’t be a snitch. Wait for your lawyer.

“Luke had a whole narrative planned. There was nothing to tie him to the job—all the signatures were in Percy’s name. Sung like a canary, pinned the whole thing on Percy like it was his idea, testified against him. You should’ve heard him on the stand. God.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Rachel says, pulling away.

“I know that. In my head.” She sucks in a breath. “It’s okay, though, because I’m about to take him down for a lot more than fraud. He can have fun weaseling his way out of grand theft. C’mon. We’ve got a heist to plan.”

* * *

Percy’s standing out on the shore when Annabeth finds him.

He’s always been handsome and sort of rugged, but there’s a lonelier edge to it, since prison. Something a bit more distant. This isn’t the first time she’s found him, staring out into the water, since they started at the warehouse here.

He must’ve heard her coming, because he doesn’t even turn around as he says, “Did I ever tell you that my mom said my dad was lost at sea?”

He did. She’s heard the story directly from Sally, too—a harrowing tale of a rough and rugged treasure hunter, caught in a storm just too big for him to navigate. It was one of a couple of stories she spun about Percy’s dad, since she knew little more about him than they did. Sally had always been a great storyteller—Annabeth sometimes wondered if that’s where Percy got his talent for personas. 

She doesn’t need to answer. As soon as she steps up next to him, he deflates a little, shoulders losing some of their tension. “Annabeth—” he says, voice an exhale, a prayer. “What are we doing?”

“We’re staring at the horizon, apparently.”

“No, don’t—” He doesn’t laugh, even a little, which clues her in that this is serious. She half-turns to him, but he keeps staring at the waves. “This job.”

“The job.”

“You don’t—” He finally breaks posture to run a hand through his hair. “If it was just the job, I wouldn’t be so worried. But the job, on top of this thing with Luke—you don’t run a job within a job, Annabeth. We’re going to get caught.”

“No, we’re not.”

“You can’t just say that.” He exhales, just audible against the wind. “You’re the best, but even you can’t stop us from getting caught just by believing it.”

“ _We’re_ the best,” she says, bumping against him. “We won’t get caught. They won’t get caught. This is bulletproof, Percy.”

“You can’t—you can’t be _sure._ ”

“He sent you to jail!”

“And he’ll send us both, this time!” He’s cracked, finally, their voices loud against the quiet. “We’re not invincible anymore, Annabeth!”

“He won’t, Percy, he won’t.” She reaches out and he folds into her. She presses both her palms flat against the sides of his head, rests his forehead against hers so that only their breath stands between them. “He won’t.”

They stand there and listen to the waves, just breathing, for as long as it takes for him to believe her.

* * *

Percy and Thalia get lunch while Annabeth tests their blindspot.

“So how’s Jason doing?” he asks, shoveling some rice into his mouth.

“Finally got a CEO position at his dad’s company.” She takes a swig of her drink, some unholy combination of lemonade, Sprite, and Coke. She hadn’t known about her brother when she’d left home; he’d searched her out sometime during his senior year of high school. He was her mother’s son by her father’s twin brother, a fact Percy quietly found kind of hilarious. “How’s Estelle doing? Have you heard from her?”

“Went and saw her and mom the other week.” They weren’t technically supposed to visit their families while working this job—it was easier if they kept some distance, since the fewer people that knew they were suspiciously out of town the weeks prior to a very grand and public theft, the better—but Percy just spent five years away from his family. Who was gonna stop him? His wife? “Estelle’s putting together something for her science fair. I didn’t understand half of what she was talking about. Turning fifteen made her smart.”

Thalia absently reached over and patted his head. “We can’t all be pretty.”

As he bats her hand away, Annabeth says “Almost there” into her phone, which is their cue. Thalia shoves her falafel at him, making him scramble to take it while she pulls up her cameras. “I told you! Just a second.”

“Chill, Annie,” Thalia says. Percy’s absolutely certain Thalia uses the nickname purely so Annabeth will have to stand there in silent rage. Annabeth, in one of the cameras, ‘hangs up’ her phone and sticks it into her pocket. “Okay, you there?”

Annabeth pulls her museum tour headphones back on and nods a little. They watch as she takes measured steps towards the bathrooms, where they’ve been shifting the cameras.

Once she disappears off screen, Thalia says, “Okay, you’re in the blindspot.”

There’s a pause as a couple walks past, then, “I’m gonna keep walking.”

Annabeth takes measured steps until Percy and Thalia can see her, and then measures the distance. “Twelve feet. Good job, Thals.”

Thalia grins with all her teeth. “Anytime, Annie.”

“If you’re both done,” Percy says, because Annabeth’s still supposed to be _by herself_ and not bitching at her sister through a comm.

“Spoilsport,” Thalia responds, but packs up her laptop.

* * *

Grover talks his boss at Vogue into getting Percy hired as a special-diet manager for the Gala and then grabs everyone’s finally-tailored outfits to take to the warehouse. They’d put Leo in charge of picking them but didn’t want to weigh him down with the work of their clothes _and_ designing Piper’s, so Grover had taken them to a guy he knew who owed him a few favors.

He spends some time cornering Annabeth and Percy and talking over the security Cartier assigned.

“Cartier has hired the best private security in the world,” Grover tells them, setting printed headshots across from them at the poker table. “Argus Panoptes led the queen of England’s security for the last ten years, and as you know, she’ll be ninety-four this year. Then Aeacus Saronic, former Mossad and IDF Special Forces, elite commando unit. I’m pretty certain they’re assassins.”

“Well, it’s a nice necklace.”

* * *

The day of the job dawns just like any other. 

Percy’s up before Annabeth is; they tend to trade off, depending on whoever was up late planning the night before, and Annabeth had a very long night. He leaves a coffee on the bedside table and a kiss to her forehead before loading their van.

It’s almost lunch and Grover’s running through covers with Annabeth when Leo comes to them, and Percy knows something’s wrong before he even reaches them, halfway across the warehouse. Considering he had a dress rehearsal with Piper that morning, it’s fair to say that Percy’s stomach is somewhere near his uvula.

“We’ve got a problem,” Leo says, and pulls out his phone.

They all crowd behind Leo as he plays the video. It was obviously recorded at his waistline, as he asks questions about the strange magnetic clasp as innocently as possible. “You can only do it with the magnet?” Video Leo asks.

“Only with the magnet,” Video Body Guard answers.

“Fuck,” Thalia says.

Annabeth takes Leo’s phone from him and plays the unclasping over and over. “What _is_ that?” she says, almost to herself.

“How big a problem is this going to be?” Rachel asks.

“If we can’t get it figured out?” Grover says, sharing a look with Annabeth. “Job-ruining.”

Thalia taps her nails on her desk. “Percy, weren’t you just telling me about your little sister’s science fair project?”

Percy blinks. Dials his phone.

_“Percy,”_ Estelle says. _“I’m_ **_busy._ ** _”_

“C’mon,” he says, smiling. “It’s practically homework. You’ll love it.”

_“You’re so lame. What’s wrong?”_

“I’m sending you a video. Do you think you can fix it?”

A few minutes of silence where, presumably, Estelle runs through the video a few times. “ _Give me, like, three hours. Am I gonna get in trouble for helping you with this?”_

“Mom’ll think it’s neat. Thank you, Jelly.”

_“I hate you. I’ll send you a message when I’ve got it._ ”

Percy hangs up, and Leo raises an eyebrow. “Jelly?”

“Smartest fifteen-year-old in the state,” Percy agrees. He looks at Annabeth. “She’ll get it done. What do we have in the meantime?”

* * *

They’re parking the van outside Central Park when a teenage girl races up to them, miles of curly hair pulled up in a quick and messy bun. “Check it!” she says, and rams right into Percy, who oofs beneath her.

Annabeth peers at the little black tube she’s holding. “Tell me about it.”

They probably couldn’t have stopped Estelle if they wanted to—her eyes were bright with accomplishment. “They used poly-magnets and a spring. I’m pretty sure. It gives you attraction and repulsion in the same axis, you know?”

“Absolutely not,” Percy says with a soft grin.

“Well, they’re drawn together, but they won’t touch until you rotate it—” which she demonstrates with a twist of her wrist— “and then they lock. So I made a positive and a negative pole in a loop, which should solve your problem.”

“You’re a genius, Jelly,” Percy says, pressing a kiss to her forehead, which she tries in vain to wiggle out of. Annabeth gives her a high-five.

“Good job, Estelle,” Annabeth says, which makes Estelle beam. 

“I owe you one,” Percy says, and then waves her off. “I’ll see you this weekend, alright?”

Estelle throws a “Good luck!” over her shoulder as she heads toward the subway.

Rachel and Nico, who are getting off here, watch her leave with bemused expressions. “What’s your mom do?” Rachel asks.

“Writes novels.”

* * *

Annabeth gets ready in a bathroom in Central Park. She doesn’t do her makeup often, but she does like the ritual of it—lotion, foundation, eyeshadow and blush. One of her few memories of before she ran away included sitting on her stepmother’s vanity and watching as she got ready in the mornings, asking questions about each step until she was carried and set outside the bathroom.

“Okay, we’re up,” she says into the comms now, pulling on her cheek so she can run a mascara brush through her eyelashes. “Is everybody on?”

Everyone sounds off while she does the other eyes. “Okay. Half an hour, everyone. Countdown starting...now.”

“First,” Percy says, and she thinks she can hear the van driving in the background. She listens while she mattes out her lipstick. “There’s no need to be nervous. The food’s better than most people think and even solitary can be kind of peaceful. But we want to make sure we say thank you—the last three weeks have been amazing for me—”

“And me,” Annabeth says as a toilet flushes behind her. “We’ve all worked very hard for this moment, so whatever happens tonight, I want you to remember this.” She starts checking her hair, making sure to catch stray curls that got out of the big, ropy twists Rachel did earlier that evening. “You are not doing this for me. You are not doing this for you. Somewhere out there there is a twelve-year-old kid, lying in bed, dreaming of being a criminal. Let's do this for them.”

And then she heads out into the night.

* * *

Leo trails Piper and her date through a maze of glittering jewels and stone statues.

Thalia is painting her nails in front of half a dozen camera feeds across two monitors in the back of a gyro truck. Percy, in the same truck, is arguing with a couple about the meaning of _closed._

Rachel is already elbows-deep in the kitchen sinks while Nico weaves through glittering tables, surrounded by other waiters. Grover does his best to watch them without _watching them._

Annabeth is ‘Athena’ for the night, someone vaguely familiar who speaks primarily in Greek. She smiles politely at the cameras flashing around her and has a quick, polite conversation with Tom Hiddleston. 

All their pieces are in place. Now, they just have to hope everything falls correctly.

* * *

“Need a gluten-free and a broiled fish for Table Eight!” Percy reads, now installed in the kitchens at the Gala. In his ear, Thalia says “Okay, counting down—three, two, one.”

“Where’s the vegan for Table Four?” he asks, and some waitress points it out for him. Once she loads her arms with other plates, he pulls a bottle of ipecac syrup out of his pocket and places three drops at the three points around the soup destined for Piper McLean, and signals another waiter to take it to her table.

They fill their time with absent chatter, trying not to act like they’re paying any attention until Grover tells them, “She’s in deep. Maybe half a bowl.”

Nico, who had grown out his hair to look appropriately androgynous for the occasion, lets them all know he’s closed down the women’s bathroom, leaving only one of the five stalls unlocked.

“Game on!” he hears Thalia say over the comm, and he tries to keep his smirk down as he barks at another waiter.

* * *

Nico can hear Annabeth yelling at the security guards outside in Greek as Piper vomits into the last stall. Thalia’s letting them know Annabeth’s marking the outside of the blindspot as Nico rushes to comfort Piper.

“Are you alright? Oh, you poor thing,” he says, rubbing a hand against her back. She takes heaving breaths, elbows propped on the porcelain. 

“Breathe, breathe,” he says, and unclicks the claps of the necklace when she lurches forward for another round. Estelle’s magnet works like a charm; he’s got the necklace off and inside his jacket pocket by the time Piper comes back up for air.

“Ten seconds,” Thalia says, and Nico stands.

“Coming at you, Annabeth,” Grover tells them.

“Here he comes!”

It happens in a second. Annabeth stumbles, distracting a kid carrying a tray stacked with plates just outside the women’s room; while he glances behind himself, Nico sidles up and slips the Toussaint from his pocket to beneath a plate and then ducks into the men’s bathroom; the waiter continues on, back towards the kitchens, and Annabeth vanishes into the crowd.

“He’s out!” Thalia says, and something makes a clicking sound over the comms. “Everyone’s in the clear.”

“Wait, where is he?” Percy asks while Nico wriggles into his binder in one of the stalls.

A tapping noise over the comms. “Stalled in the hallway,” Thalia says. “Chitchatting.”

“I’m on it,” Grover says. He finds the waiter they’ve dumped the necklace on speaking with another, crowding the hallway between the bathrooms and the kitchen. “Hey! Hey!” Both the boys startle and scramble when they hear him. “What are you guys doing? I’m not paying you to talk!”

“Bathroom break! Bathroom break!” Rachel announces over the comms, which meant she got the necklace and was about to start deconstructing it.

Nico steps out of the bathroom at the same moment Piper does, her collarbone bare, so he gets a front-row seat to the security guards losing their damned minds.

* * *

Thalia laughs to herself as they clear the dining hall and close all the exits.

“Are people bitching?” she asks.

“Like crazy,” Annabeth confirms, voice hushed.

A twenty minutes pass, and Thalia keeps an absent eye on the cameras; watching the crowds, the security’s slow sweep across every room Piper had even looked in, general employees being methodically scanned for valuables. She keeps an eye out for the rest of them; Annabeth, hidden in a crowd; Nico, being waved out; Grover, doing a slow circuit by the moat surrounding the dining area.

She hears the sirens before she sees anything on screen. “Shit’s popping off,” she informs the rest. “Police coming, Cartier... A _bunch_ of news people.”

“They’re about halfway through,” Grover whispers to the rest of them.

On screen, Thalia notices some guy in a suit making a slow circuit through the kitchens. “Rachel, there’s a guy in the kitchen.”

Rachel has been silent the entire time she’s been working, and there are no cameras in the bathroom, so Thalia has no way of knowing how close she is to being finished. “I just need a few more minutes,” she says now. Thalia watches as the guard twitches a few plates; she thinks it’s the Argus guy from Cartier’s private security.

“We don’t have a few minutes,” Annabeth whispers.

Argus turns his head towards the bathroom. “Oh shit,” Thalia says. “He’s right there.”

“Grover, how close are you right now?” Annabeth asks.

“I’m by the moat,” he answers.

“Grover, pull it out of the water.”

“Here?” Thalia watches as he starts unbuttoning his shirt, just enough to reach their copy Toussaint he has hidden underneath.

“Just plant it in the water! Pull it out, right now!”

He dips it quickly in the water, just enough to get it convincingly soaked, and then holds it, glittering, in the air. “Found it!” Grover announces. Thalia watches as the guy in the kitchens, moments away from discovering Rachel with pieces of the Toussaint scattered across her lap, says something into his sleeve and turns around. She breathes a relieved sigh that everyone else echoes.

* * *

As Nico slips pieces of the cannibalized Toussaint into each of their hands or pockets, Annabeth spots Luke leaned against a bar.

She has her back turned towards him, but she knows he must recognize her from the curve of her shoulder, the tangled pile of her curls. She imagines what it might be like to turn, now, to smile against his look of disbelief, to turn even one of the half a dozen knives he’d stabbed into her in the last half decade.

Instead, she turns to the outside, crashing against him, hands clutching at his jacket. She says “Signomi,” face still turned to the side, as she releases his lapels, and then walks away, his drink in her hand.

[](https://pjo-hoo-bigbang.tumblr.com/post/622550687155437568)

* * *

The Toussaint is being returned bright and early the next morning. Octavian’s already there, of course; it’s his job to ensure the necklace has been safely returned. 

The guards carry the necklace into the vault and set it on the table, and he settles down in front of it, pulling out his loupe. It really is a magnificent necklace, he thinks. It’s Cartier’s pride and joy for a reason.

It’s scratched. He looks again. It’s the same—scratches, deep—they’re—this isn’t diamond. This can’t be diamond. Zirconium, if he had to guess. But not diamond. He exhales. 

Checks again.

The Toussaint in front of him is a fake.

“Dear God!”

* * *

“First things first,” Reyna Ramírez-Arellano says. Her hair is pulled back in a severe bun, like it always is in public. She knows for a fact her suit and makeup are immaculate. She likes people to know exactly who they’re dealing with. If they underestimate her, it’s their fault. “I’m not a member of law enforcement.”

In front of her is the allegedly false Toussaint and two Cartier employees. She places down a business card for both of them. “I work with the insurance carrier. Which means, I’m either looking for fraud, or I’m looking for the real necklace. Beyond that, I couldn’t care less.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find either here,” the manager tells her.

“We’ll see about that, Monsieur. Octavian, was it?”

“Yes,” answers the other man. He looks rather thin and sickly; she wonders if all the time he must be spending down here in the vault had ill-effects on him. 

“When did you last see what you believe to be the authentic item?”

“When it left here for the Met Gala.”

“And when did you know this was a fake?”

“The moment it returned.”

“And you two,” Reyna says, spinning on one heel. The two security guards assigned for the necklace are impassive in front of her. “Did you have eyes on the necklace the entire evening? Apart from when Ms McLean had her unfortunate incident in the bathroom?”

“That is correct,” says one.

“Did you accompany her inside?”

“It’s a women’s bathroom.”

“It’s a very big necklace.”

“There is only one entrance in and out,” cuts in the other. “We were stationed at the door.”

“Did you check the plumbing? No? I did.” She steps back. “Squeaky clean, so to speak. Whoever stole this necklace managed to get in and out without being detected. Which means, we’re dealing with someone very smart.” She stops her circuit around the room and pivots back to the first two men, Octavian and his manager. “Gentlemen. I’ve seen a thoroughbred racehorse thrown into a tree shredder. People will go to great lengths to defraud an insurance carrier.”

And she will not be defrauded.

* * *

Reyna points to the computer. “There! What’s this?”

The screen shows a woman in a long, glittering dress bumping into a serving boy with a fully loaded tray, just outside the woman’s bathroom.

“I’m saying that's not a blind spot,” Jake Mason says.

“What do you call that, then?”

“The _bathroom._ ”

“But I don’t _see_ the bathroom.”

“That’s. . .”

“Because it’s in the blind spot.”

Mason scoffs. “What can someone steal from a bathroom, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Toiletries, mints, hand towels...a six-pound diamond necklace, apparently.”

Mason looks unmoved. Reyna looks unimpressed.

“Who’s this?” she asks, pointing at the kid with the tray.

“The busboy?”

“Do you know him?”

“How would I know a _busboy?_ ”

“Classist, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know everyone who goes in and out of the museum. Why do you care about a busboy?”

“Because he’s the only person who moves in and out of the blind spot during the period in question.”

“Could you please,” Mason says, folding his hands on the table, “stop calling it a blind spot?”

Reyna looks at him for a moment. “Fine,” she says. “The bathroom door that we can’t see because of your unique camera placement.”

“This—” Mason points at the screen— “is the most sophisticated museum security in the world. Every piece of art is recorded from multiple angles. We just _don’t_ happen to keep _art_ in the _bathroom_.”

Reyna hums and closes her folder.

* * *

“I didn’t wanna do it,” Apollo, the busboy, tells Reyna. “But my sister’s all like, ‘Come on!’ I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t _do_ that anymore.’ She’s like, ‘Everyone’s out on the loading dock!’ I know it was _really_ stupid. I know I’m an asshole. But—it wasn’t even my weed.”

She looks up. “What?”

“It wasn’t my weed! Do you want me to pee in a cup or something?”

Reyna blinks. “No, that—that won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure? I really don’t mind.”

“I’m sure.”

* * *

“They put the necklace on me. Then, I walked the red carpet. Then, I saw the exhibit. Then, I ate my soup. Then, I hurled my guts out, and then the necklace was gone, and then _everybody_ freaked out, and _then_ they found it again! I thought.” Piper McLean bites her lip, a pretty plum color that matches her very low-cut dress. “But, no?”

“This gentleman,” Reyna says, placing down a few printed photos. “Luke Castellan.”

“Mmm-hmm. He was my date?”

“Was there ever a time you two were alone while you were wearing the necklace?”

She thinks for a moment, head tilted. “No.”

“Was there anyone with you in the bathroom?”

“My head,” she says, “was in a toilet bowl.”

“And after?”

“A lot of people.”

“Do you know this woman?” On top of the photos of Luke, he places one of Annabeth Chase, walking down a stairwell as her dress fans out behind her.

“No. . .”

“Annabeth Chase. Her husband’s a convicted felon. Her father, Chiron Brunner, is a twice-convicted felon. She was present the night of the incident.”

“Did she steal the necklace?” Piper asks, leaning forward, voice a whisper.

“It doesn’t look like it. She’s the only one with an alibi,” Reyna says. “Smiling at the camera the entire time.”

“Ooh. So. . .”

“So I have five innocent people,” Reyna says, tilting her head, “who seem to be suspects, and someone who should be a suspect but isn’t. I have cameras covering every _inch_ of the museum, except for the bathroom, where a $150 million necklace was stolen from _your_ neck. It’s an interesting case.”

“Mmm,” Piper hums.

“Some days, I love my job.”

“I love my job, too,” Piper says, smiling and propping herself against her hand.

* * *

It’s a good day. The warehouse is pumping with music, pizza had been ordered in, and Percy could hear the others laughing from where he was bickering with Annabeth over which record to play next.

And then the door slams.

“You guys are _fucked,_ ” says Piper McLean as she saunters into their warehouse. Everyone freezes, even Leo. 

She tilts her head up to the ceilings as she walks. “Nice place. It must be a bitch to heat.”

“What—what are you—” Leo tries. Rachel, talking over him, says, “Hey, what the fuck!”

“Don’t worry,” Annabeth says, trying to calm everyone down. “We asked her to come.”

“You guys _asked her to come?”_ Rachel says as Piper drops onto the couch. “ _Oh?”_

Annabeth smiled unkindly. “We realized a few days ago that Ms McLean—”

“Wasn’t a total fucking idiot?”

“—Might have gotten a sense of what we were doing.”

“First of all,” she says, “if there’s one thing I know, it’s bad acting. Leo, sweetie, I love you, but you are not an actor. And I almost _never_ throw up. And last but not least—” she turns her gaze directly to Annabeth, smile pointed, “I never forget a face.”

“Yeah. Yeah. So, it seemed to us, eight shares of 150 million was better than seven shares of prison, right?”

Everyone stays silent.

“Wow,” Piper says. “ _Hi, Pipes, welcome to the team,_ ” she imitates in a high-pitched voice. “Let’s not all high-five at once. Plus—I am the one who is _saving_ your asses from insurance fraud.”

Grover turns his head sharply. “What?”

“Insurance fraud?” Rachel asks.

“I was going to get to that,” Annabeth says. 

“When?”

“It seems that they’ve hired an insurance investigator who is _right_ on your tail.”

“Who?” asks Grover.

“Uh, I don’t know, weird name, really pretty? Totally on to you.”

“Her name,” Annabeth says, “is Reyna Ramírez-Arellano.”

“You _know_ her?” asks Rachel.

“Yes. She busted my father twice and my mentor once.”

“Practically family,” Thalia says, bumping Annabeth on the arm.

Annabeth laughs and shakes her head as Leo says, “Let’s not forget that this _entire_ enterprise was to keep me out of jail.”

“No one’s going to jail,” Annabeth says.

“Are you sure?” asks Nico.

“We expected this. We prepared for this.”

“That’s clear,” Rachel scoffs.

“We will not be the prime suspect.”

“Okay, well, then, who is?”

“There’s a few. We’ve got security guys, we’ve got the busboys—”

“Luke,” Grover says, sitting up sharply.

“The _shady guy_ who put Percy away,” Rachel agrees.

Piper’s eyes roll from Grover to Annabeth, who is crossing her arms in front of her. “Wow.”

“They were going to be looking for somebody,” Annabeth says. Percy watches her try not to act defensive. “Just had to make sure it wasn’t one of us.”

“That’s kind of amazing, right?” Piper says. “The precision...it’s always the attention to detail that really gets me.”

“Why are you doing this?” Grover asks, turning to her. He looks a little nervous—fingers playing in his lap, direct voice that would translate to anger if you didn’t know him very well.

“Uh...I don’t have too many close friendships,” Piper admits. She tugs on a piece of her hair. “Most people in my industry are the worst, and, I don’t know, I thought this was kind of fun.”

Percy turns straight to Leo and tries to convey _I told you so_ as best as he can with a look. Leo rolls his eyes, letting Percy know the message is received.

“You’re becoming a criminal because you’re lonely?” Grover asks.

Piper looks nonplussed. “Who isn’t sometimes, right?”

* * *

“Luke Castellan?” Reyna asks, catching up with him as he walks his yellow lab.

“Yes?”

“Reyna Ramírez-Arellano,” she says, reaching out to shake his hand. “Bellona Insurance. Do you mind if we speak?”

He takes her up to his apartment. It’s a high-end, brightly-lit place, with several pieces of artwork that aren’t to her taste. She wonders if they were chosen specifically _because_ they looked eclectic—an cubist painting of a naked woman, two wooden tree-like sculptures.

“So, Luke. . .” she trails off, settling her evidence in front of her in neat little stacks.

“Yes?” he asks, smiling winningly.

“I have several pictures here—” she sets the photos in front of him— “of you and Piper McLean. Your hand is, often, at the back of her neck.”

“To be honest, I don’t really remember where my hands were.”

“Now, that necklace has been stolen. And you had the greatest opportunity to do so.”

His composure cracks here, just a little. “Why would _I_ want to steal a necklace?”

“And that’s what I keep asking myself.” She does a slow circuit around the apartment. Its wealth was not ostentatious, aside from the fact that it was a bright, corner apartment in New York City, but in the fact that he had all that he needed—there was nothing extraneous, nothing kept simply because it might be needed later, and everything was in perfect quality. “Why would a man who has everything risk it all for a necklace?”

Luke shrugs. “I don’t know.”

She smiles with the corner of her mouth. “It’s a very nice necklace.”

* * *

“Mrs. Chase,” Reyna greets as Annabeth slides into the booth next to her.

“Ms. Ramírez-Arellano,” Annabeth responds amiably.

“How have you been? It’s been a while.”

“A couple of years, yeah. How’s your sister?”

“She’s good, yeah. Got her own company now. Thanks for calling, by the way.”

“Yeah, no problem. I didn’t do it.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Reyna straightens her silverware. “You were just twenty feet away while the necklace was stolen. It’s a coincidence.”

“It’s a solid alibi.”

“What is it? Is it genetic? Is your whole family like this?”

“I’m adopted, so no. My birth father was my first mark, actually.”

“Bred not born, I see.”

“I don’t know. Don’t know enough about my mom to say for sure.”

“Right. Well, I’m going to make this easy for you.” Annabeth tilts her head a little, a curl falling out from behind her ear. “I don’t want you. I just want the necklace. I don’t care. I’ll say I found it on the subway.”

“How about some of it.”

Reyna’s eyes close. “How much of it?”

“Hypothetically?” Reyna isn’t sure if it’s the gray in her eyes or if they’re just naturally bigger than a normal person’s, but Annabeth’s ‘innocent face’ is unsettlingly convincing. “Ten percent.”

“And where’s the hypothetical rest?”

“I don’t know.”

Reyna feels her brows drop, and Annabeth laughs a little. “I’m serious! I don’t know.”

“This is exhausting. Interesting, at least, but exhausting. Is it this exhausting for you?”

“I find it invigorating, actually.”

“Of course you do. Hypothetically, where’s that ten percent?”

Annabeth opens her phone and slides a photo to Reyna. It takes her a moment, but she recognizes the man—hard not to, with that scar down over his eye. She’d done some research on him after their conversation the other night, and so she knows both that it’s Luke Castellan and that he’s the guy who was arrested with Percy. She knows she’s looking at a photo of the guy who put Annabeth’s husband behind bars. “So it’s not just profit,” she says, sliding the phone back. “It’s revenge.”

“Just trying to help out an old friend.”

Reyna hums. She thinks for a moment. The diner is quiet around them; it’s filled mostly with people winding down from long days, and Reyna’s already paid, so there are no waiters hovering. “It’s brilliant, I won’t lie.”

“What is?” Annabeth says, but she’s got a smile at the corner of her lips telling Reyna she’s pleased.

“You know, one day, you are going to have to let this go?”

“And one day, I will.” She closes her phone, flips it upside down on the table, and straightens in her seat. “Let’s just say that hypothetically, I know where ten percent of that necklace is. Can you get a search warrant?”

Reyna taps on the table. “I’d need probable cause.”

“Well,” Annabeth says. Her eyes are bright. “Hypothetically, we’re working on that right now.”

* * *

“You have no idea,” says Detective Yew, leaning over the interrogation table, “how these came to be in your possession?”

They’d searched the apartment that morning, after a tip from some insurance investigator. Castellan, at the table, looks sullen and irritable, which Yew supposes he understands. It can’t be pleasant to wake up to police pounding on your door.

“No,” Castellan says.

“But you were Ms. McLean’s date on the night these necklaces were switched.”

Castellan laughs and shakes his head. “Yes, I was.”

“Doesn’t that seem to be a rather _large_ coincidence to you?”

He shrugs. “Maybe so.”

“Are you familiar with a company called Castellan Holdings, LLC?”

“Of course.”

“Well,” Detective Yew says, and here is the kicker, “it seems that three sweet old ladies, who apparently don’t exist, recently transferred some very large sums of money into Castellan Holdings LLC.” One of his coworkers had spilled her coffee when they’d discovered this; hook, line, sinker. “Do you know how that might have happened, Mr. Castellan?”

He’s quiet for a moment. His arms are crossed. They both know how this looks. “I think I need to talk to my lawyer.”

* * *

They tell the whole story over drinks.

Everyone knew pieces, but only he and Annabeth knew everything. Grover getting Luke on the guest list for the dinner where he met Piper. He and Annabeth going over lists of old ladies to act as sellers for their cut-up Toussaint. Piper’s own role in tricking Luke long enough to snap a photo of the pendant Annabeth slipped into his coat pocket the night of the Gala.

“A toast,” Leo says, raising his bottle of champagne, “to our dear friend Luke. May he rest in peace and prison.”

“Cheers,” they all echo, and the warehouse kitchen is filled with the sound of clinking glasses.

“I do have a question,” Piper says. “So, love that he went to jail, because revenge is a great look on you, Annabeth—” which was true; Annabeth always glowed after a well-done job— “and because it’s great that we didn’t. But if you only sold the jewels for 85 million, how does it work out that we get 16 apiece?”

Percy raises an eyebrow at Annabeth. She raises one back and says, “Do you wanna?”

Percy does, so he shifts in his seat, facing the rest of them. “You thought we were just gonna steal one necklace?”

“What do you think we are, a bunch of pussies?” Rachel says, and snorts into her beer when every neck whips back towards her.

“While everyone was worried about what was happening around your neck,” Annabeth says, nodding at Piper.

“And you were hurling your guts out,” Thalia says. “Thanks for that, by the way.” Everyone else pitches in thanks while Piper waves it off.

“The Met was on lockdown,” Percy continues, “and they cleared the kitchens.”

Annabeth reaches over and steals a swig of Percy’s coke. “So while everyone was watching the entrance, we thought we’d check out the exhibit.”

Nico catches on first, and nearly drops his glass with how hard he’s laughing. Percy slides off his seat, smiling along, and goes to open the fridge. “Because why would you steal one necklace—” the door’s open, and everyone gasps— “when you could steal more?”

They’ve got six necklaces, four pairs of earrings, six rings, and five tiaras sitting on four different shelves. One necklace is draped across bottles of lager.

“Holy shit,” Grover says.

“Holy shit!” Leo echoes.

“Y’all are fucking nuts,” Nico laughs.

“Yeah,” Annabeth says. “We didn’t just print the Toussaint from that thing. We printed a lot of jewels.”

Rachel takes a swig from her beer. “Felt like I was working at a Kinko’s.”

“Meanwhile,” Percy says, “I visited an old friend.”

Nico shakes his head. “I _knew_ there was a reason you asked for Hazel’s number.”

“She changed it while I was in prison!”

“Hazel?” Piper asks.

“My half-sister,” Nico says. “She’s my dad’s. Spent a few years with Cirque du Soleil. She’s shorter than me, if you can believe it.”

“We bundled her in a catering cart, had Thalia loop the video feeds, and spent a little time swapping out some jewelry. Did you know they suspend the costumes on this neat metal grid?” Percy feels a grin cut across his face. “We just suspended Hazel up there too.”

Piper’s eyes are wide. “What if somebody came in?” 

“Oh, someone did,” Annabeth says. “I had to argue with some poor security guards in Greek for like, ten minutes. Brought me back to my debate days. Just saying nonsense and hoping they wouldn’t notice.”

Percy lets Annabeth have another swig of his coke. “Rachel met me by the kitchens. We just wheeled Hazel back through, loaded her and the jewelry in the back of the van we’d rented, and drove right out.”

“Stealing the Toussaint was great,” Annabeth says, handing him his bottle back, “but without that little diversion, we’d never have been able to get away with the rest. Which, once sold, will bring your cuts to $38.3 million each.”

* * *

A week later, Percy and Grover are playing some made-up card game in the middle of the warehouse.

Everyone’s gone home or gone out, so it’s just the two of them for tonight. Percy rarely drinks, but he’d split a cider with Grover and feels the buzz just hovering.

“Do you know what you’re going to do with the money yet?” Grover asks, popping open another bottle.

“I don’t know,” Percy says. “I’ve never been rich before. I’ve barely ever been _comfortable_ before, you know?” He places down a king, which will theoretically beat Grover’s two tens. Grover’s thoughtful look at the move tells Percy that he might be wrong. “Figure I’ll do something for mom and Estelle. Annabeth and I are talking about moving, getting an apartment someplace nice. Maybe we’ll travel.” Grover takes Percy’s king. Percy doesn’t really know the rules, but he’s pretty sure that wasn’t a legal move. “What are you doing?”

“College funds for the kids,” Grover responds immediately. “Might talk to Juniper about a new house. Although, I don’t know how I’m explaining the haul from this job. That’ll be fun.”

Percy takes a swig of his soda. “There’s an idea. Maybe I’ll get Mom a place in Montauk.”

“Sally deserves it.” He frowns as Percy places down a pair of sevens. “Juniper could use some cushion money for her landscaping business, and I’ve been kicking around the idea of a nonprofit for a while.”

“What kind of nonprofit?”

“Environment stuff, probably. Not too sure on the specifics.”

“Very you.”

“Yeah.” He wins the round and grabs Percy’s cards so he can shuffle them. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do. College for the kids, Juniper’s business, funnel the rest into a nonprofit. That’d be nice.”

“Could do a lot with a nonprofit that had thirty million in its bank.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Maybe I’ll find something like that. After. Put some of it towards someone doing something.”

“Think you’ll do something?”

Percy thinks, studying his hand absently. “Maybe. I think I could coast for a while, but Annabeth’ll start going nuts by next year, just wait. Might be good to give her a project early.”

“She was telling me about how she might go back to college.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that to me too.” He starts the round with a queen. “I don’t know. Maybe I will do some nonprofit thing. Domestic abuse or queer kids or something. Tell me how yours goes.”

“Of course.”

Percy clinks his cup against Grover’s bottle. “Your move.”

* * *

The minute the first deposit of her cut of 38 million lands in her bank account, Rachel goes home.

Well, technically, she first stops at a bank and transfers as much of her trust fund as she can in one transaction. Then, she buys a ticket home, empties her room of what she can’t live without, walks up to him, says “I’m done being your daughter. Go and fuck yourself,” and buys a ticket back into NYC.

She’s been scoping an apartment for a while; it’s got great lighting, a gorgeous view over the harbor, and proximity to an art therapy center. 

Speaking of, she takes a moment in the airport on her way back to confirm that Percy’s still free to tour it with her the next day. He’s got a great resting bitch face.

Maybe she’ll get lunch with Piper before she heads to LA. They’re the only two in the group that really come from money, and they’ve been talking about what charities they want to split their cuts between. But she also just likes Piper; it takes guts to throw in your lot with criminals, especially just for the hell of it. Rachel respects that. 

Here’s what her father never understood: all Rachel wants is a nice apartment, friends, and a place to do art.

_see you tues red,_ Percy texts back, and Rachel heads towards her gate.

* * *

“Do you have a minute?”

Nico’s voice behind him nearly makes Percy drop the glass he’s holding. “Uh, yeah,” he says, wiping at the water he splashed on the counter. “Sure. What’s up?”

Nico leans against the cabinets across from him, eyes doing a sweep of the area just to check that they’re alone. “I just—” He blows at his bangs with a quick gust of air. “Thanks, for trusting me with this job. And for everything else. I was really angry with you for a really long time, and by the time I realized it was unfair, I didn’t know how to go back. So.”

This felt like a gift Percy didn’t know what to do with. “I—I’m glad I could do it for you. Have you visited Bianca?”

“Yeah,” Nico says. “Got her an actually good lawyer, too. Talking about getting her sentence reduced.”

“That’s great.” Percy didn’t know when he picked up the orange, but he’s halfway through breaking off the rind, pieces scattered across the kitchen.

“I also—” He cut himself off. He’s eyeing Percy’s orange like he regrets not having something of his own to fiddle with. “I wanted to ask about your top surgeon. Since I have money now, or whatever.”

Percy smiles a little, just with the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, sure. Yeah. I’ll see if I have a card. I’m sure Annabeth remembers her site, if nothing else.”

“Okay,” Nico says. “Okay.”

A moment passes. “Was there anything. . .”

“No, just—just that, mostly.” Nico runs a hand through his hair. “Your mom wanted me to come to dinner next week.”

“Yeah?” Sally told Percy she’d dragged Nico over for food several times while Percy was in prison.

“Yeah.”

“You going?”

“Are you?”

“Maybe.”

“I think I wouldn’t mind.” Nico kicks at the cabinet, softly, just to hear the thud and rattle. “I think that’d be alright. Not like she’s your mom, or anything.”

“Nah, man, she adopted you ages ago.” Percy finishes picking at his orange and gives half to Nico, who takes it. “I’d like that, too.”

* * *

Annabeth and Thalia are on a flight to go visit Chiron.

He lived on Long Island until about three years ago, when he moved west to look after some of his ‘crazy hick relatives.’ They last saw each other at Christmas, and while they hadn’t seen him every week since they moved out, it was still weird going such long stretches without visiting.

Annabeth’s always liked planes. The efficiency of flight. The way time blurs at the edges; how you could spend hours that feel like days, days that feel like hours. Seeing cities lined up far below her, on their grids or haphazardly sprawled.

She and Thalia sprang for first class, of course, because 38 million wasn’t going to spend itself.

They order champagne, either though neither of them prefer it, just to clink their glasses together six miles in the air. “Have you decided what kind of company you’re starting?”

Thalia takes a sip. “Music production. Focus on smaller, more rooted bands. Get Jason in on legal work. He loves that shit. How about you? Apply to colleges yet?”

“I’ve got a few on my list.” The end of Chiron’s medical bills had been pennies to them. Annabeth’s used to a living comfortably—she’d never been rich, exactly, but she isn’t like Percy, who grew up on the poverty line—but even she’s reeling in the face of her current bank balance.

College is one of her few big what-ifs. Most of her life she’s certain of—Thalia and Chiron, Percy, NYC. But she’s never gone to college, and she’s always kind of wondered. Considering she now had nothing but money and time. . .

“We did finally land on an apartment, though.”

“Thank God,” Thalia scoffs. “Took you two long enough.”

“Yeah? And how’s your apartment search going, again?”

“I told you,” Thalia says, jostling her shoulder. “I like my shitbox.”

“But you hate living in Manhattan.”

“I do hate living in Manhattan.” She leans back in her seat and starts fiddling with the seatbelt. “I’m proud of you, Annabeth.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Shush. I just gotta say this. This job was nuts. It could’ve gone crazy sideways, but it didn’t. I knew you and Percy were good, but that was some next level shit. I just needed to tell you once, okay? That was brilliant, and you did it, and now you and your husband can live the rest of your lives doing literally everything and anything you want.”

Annabeth shoves at her. “I said shut up.” Thalia laughs, and Annabeth joins, before falling silent for a moment. “Do you think I did the right thing? With Luke?”

“Was it _right?_ I don’t know.” Thalia hums to herself as she thinks. “I do think he deserved it, though. Do you know why he went after Percy? Was it to get to you?”

“I’ve spent a long time thinking about it,” Annabeth says. “And I don’t think so. I don’t think it was about me at all.” Thalia hums like she agrees; Luke always had a soft spot for the both of them, but Annabeth especially. “I think it was about Percy. And, maybe. He was testing a theory.”

“That you’d side with him,” Thalia says. “If it came down to it.”

“Yeah. Too bad for him that he was wrong.”

“Nobody crosses Annabeth Chase,” Thalia agrees, and they toast, again, just a little for the friend they both used to have.

* * *

Leo leans against the gas pump, one of the few in this stretch of arid coast, his phone held to his ear. “And then she kills him, right?”

“Of course she kills him,” Piper says. “We haven’t had a chance to film that, yet. Mel, the stunt, is out sick, but we should be good by next week. How’s California?”

“Long,” he says. “I’m about two hours outside San Francisco, but I feel like I’ve been driving for days already.”

The gas pump pops as the tank is filled, and Leo pulls it out and slams the cap closed. 

“Still visiting me in LA?”

“Definitely,” he responds. “If you don’t make plans with me soon, I’ll just make sure to hunt you down myself. Break into your apartment and make fajitas.”

“I’d pay you to do that,” Piper says. “Sorry, one sec. What the _hell_ are you doing—”

He walks aimlessly through the gas station as Piper bitches at some of her employees on the other end. He doesn’t regret calling her while she was working; directing took up most of her time nowadays, so the fact that he caught her at all was a relief.

“Okay, yeah, lunch,” she says, and he directs his attention back to the call. “When are you getting here?”

“Sometime next week.” He picks at the edge of a price sticker. “Depends on how often I stop. Someone’s selling a Cobra a little north of you, thought about stopping by and seeing if I could get it running.”

“Is that the car with the eyes?”

“Cars don’t have eyes, Pipes.”

“All cars have eyes.”

“Fair, I guess. Did you ever text Reyna?”

“What would I text Reyna for?” There is a studied disinterest in Piper’s voice that has Leo grinning.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just wondering if I should expect to see her when I break into your apartment.”

“ _Leo!”_ He accidentally knocks over a display as he crumples over with laughter, earning him a glare from the cashier. “You’re fired. I’m firing you as my best friend. Go away.”

“Alright, alright. Call you tomorrow?”

“No. Don’t talk to me. I’m serious.”

“Talk to you then.”

“Drive safe.”

* * *

A little over a year later has Percy cooking in his mother’s beach house, Annabeth sitting on the counter next to him.

“When’s Thalia getting here?” he asks her as she ducks to give him access to the spice cabinet.

“After Nico, I think,” she says. “She’s bringing Jason, and he’s not getting off until five.”

He shoves a spoon at her. “Taste this. He still working for his dad?”

“Just until the end of the month. Maybe more chili powder?”

He adds more chili powder. “And Piper and Leo are flying in tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I think Reyna’s meeting them at the airport. Did you get the tickets for Piper’s movie?”

“I thought she emailed them to you? You know I don’t check my email.”

“I know this.” She reaches over and grabs his shoulders so that she can reel him in and rest her arms against them. “It is one of my least favorite things about you.”

“Mm.” He presses a kiss to her nose and uses her momentary confusion to escape back to watch his cooking. 

Distantly, thuds turn suddenly into Rachel slamming into the kitchen. “Have you seen Estelle?”

Annabeth and Percy share a look. “No.”

“Fuck.” She ducks right to slam right back out, through the door that leads straight to the shore.

Annabeth doesn’t even get through “What the—” before it’s Estelle slamming against the counter. She shot up almost two inches between fifteen and sixteen and is almost taller than Annabeth now, something Annabeth finds quietly infuriating. “Where’s Rachel?”

“Didn’t see her,” Percy says, dumping in his rice.

Estelle narrows her eyes. “Liar.”

“Estelle?” Sally calls from upstairs, which makes Estelle’s blue eyes widen comically. 

“Later,” she says, and bullets out the same way Rachel left.

Percy cracks before Annabeth does, the two of them folded over themselves with laughter. He reaches over for the pot lid and covers it before wrapping his arms loosely around her waist. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she says, running a hand through his hair. She presses a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m glad we’re not in jail.”

He laughs into her shoulder. “I’m pretty glad myself.”

They don’t pull apart until Percy’s timer goes off, a few minutes before Nico will arrive, as alive as he gets with the knowledge that his sister will be free within the year. Estelle will chase Rachel in after that, both inexplicably drenched.

And they will be home. And they will be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> again, quick shoutout to auri, ace, rainbow, miranda, ran, emmett, and lise, for being such a fantastic team. i seriously couldn't have done it without you. the embedded work is by [@mlbdraws](https://mlbdraws.tumblr.com/) and [@wisdomofchase](https://wisdomofchase.tumblr.com/) and [@officialpjo](https://officialpjo.tumblr.com/) and be sure to check out the other fics in the collection. follow [@pjo-hoo-bigbang](https://pjo-hoo-bigbang.tumblr.com/) for more content and next year's bang!


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